Lehigh County commissioners mirror national dilemma

November 09, 2012|Bill White

Some of the broad questions facing the Republican Party and its majority in the U.S. House are being played out in Lehigh County.

When the tea party emerged with a series of rallies nationwide a few years ago, the main speaker at the rally on the Bethlehem Area Public Library steps was Scott Ott, a conservative blogger and Lehigh County executive candidate.

Ott went on to nearly unseat Democratic incumbent County Executive Don Cunningham. He later helped lead the fight against Cunningham's 16 percent tax increase in 2011 and used that as the springboard for a campaign that launched him and slatemates Lisa Scheller and Vic Mazziotti onto the board of commissioners. There was little question who would be driving the agenda for the 7-2 Republican majority, particularly when another like-minded conservative, Michael Schware, was appointed to a vacant seat.

What has become apparent is that not all Republicans on the board were as ideologically pure, from a tea party perspective, as the four strongest conservatives. Republican commissioners President Brad Osborne, elected in that same 2011 election but not part of Ott's "reform slate," clearly was uncomfortable with some of his colleagues' more extreme positions, such as their inclination to turn away Community Development Block Grant money designated to help local communities and social agencies. Longtime Republican Commissioner Percy Dougherty likewise seemed a poor fit for the very conservative group.

It came to a head over the last month when a 5-4 majority voted to amend County Executive Bill Hansell's budget to call for $5 million in 2013 budget cuts as a down payment on the slate's campaign promise to roll back the 16 percent tax hike.

Osborne and Dougherty voted no and made it clear that although they want the budget cut once the newly appointed Hansell has time to impose priority-based budgeting, this proposal, which called for personnel cuts that focused heavily on the courts and law enforcement, was the wrong way to do it. This set the stage for a Hansell veto of the amended budget and an attempt to override.

Instead, the county executive was joined by Osborne, Dougherty, the board's two Democrats and county judicial/law enforcement officials at a press conference in which Hansell announced a "partial veto" that included changing the budget to include $3.5 million in new spending cuts and a $3 million tax reduction.

"While this agreement isn't as eye-catching as an edict to cut government workers' salaries by $5 million with no forethought, it is an agreement that we can all live with," he said. "I am using the veto surgically to correct a problem rather than using it as a blunt instrument to simply say no and force an arbitrary choice."

The politics involved here are interesting. The compromise seems to ensure that the commissioners won't have the six votes needed to override the veto, although the slate and the very conservative crowd I've seen at commissioners' meetings are likely to exert pressure. The cuts offered in this amended budget — and for that matter, permitted under the slate's amended version — don't represent the kind of sustainable, permanent reductions that would forestall a future tax increase. In short, games are being played all around.

What this dispute does do is set up an unnecessary confrontation between moderate Republicans and very conservative ones, accompanied by threats to exact future revenge on Republicans who were willing to compromise with Democrats.

Sound familiar? We'll see the same kinds of issues arising as the national party considers how to react to President Barack Obama's victory and the GOP failure to capture the Senate.

With Obama settled in for four more years, should the House GOP majority continue to refuse to consider tax increases for the wealthy or should they give ground in return for serious spending cuts? Will this election soften the dynamic in which any deviation from ideological purity by either side is perceived as betrayal with the risk of a future primary election challenge from the party's more extreme elements? Will Obama prove more adept than before at forming the necessary coalitions?

I asked Muhlenberg College political science professor Chris Borick about the likelihood of attitude change in Washington, and he was optimistic that Congress will look hard for common ground. He also said he thinks the Republicans would be crazy to interpret these results as a mandate to double down on ultraconservative views and refuse reasonable compromise with Obama and the Democrats.

"I believe in my heart that democracy is about legitimate interests coming together and finding something that can be satisfactory," he said. "And I think on so many issues, there's room for that to happen."

I know what the extreme elements of both parties want. The question is: Do taxpayers want confrontation or do they want compromise?

In Lehigh County, they're getting some of both. Next year's elections, particularly for county executive, may tell us which approach they prefer.